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CSUB to welcome National Steinbeck Center participants retracing steps of the journey depicted in the novel “The Grapes of Wrath”

September 26, 2013

In 2014, California State University Bakersfield will celebrate the 75th Anniversary of John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. To initiate the commemoration of a year’s worth of events, CSUB and the School of Arts and Humanities, will welcome the participants of “The Journey” during a reception to be held on October 13, 2013 at 5:30pm in the Dezember Reading Room inside the Walter Stiern Library.

The Journey, which will take place from October 4-14, 2013, includes members of The National Steinbeck Center retracing the steps that The Grapes of Wrath’s Joad family took along America’s Route 66 through Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona at the height of the Dust Bowl—toward California and their hopes of a better life. The trip will be led by artists, writers, musicians and others who will be actively engaged in exploring the human experience of struggle and resilience—each charged with creating new work inspired by the journey. They will interview people along the route, create artistic explorations on these themes and broadcast them via social media, inviting creative multi-media responses from the public.

“The Grapes of Wrath is a classic novel that is really bigger than life and has taken on mythic proportions,” said Dr. Richard Collins, Dean of the CSUB School of Arts and Humanities. “So what we’d like to do is celebrate the novel and all of its cultural legacy. We celebrate the art, the history and the memories. It’s who we are, who we’ve become and who we might become.”

The event is free and open to the public. Parking is available in Lot D. For more information on The National Steinbeck Center’s The Journey, visit http://www.steinbeck.org/pages/steinbeck-festival-2014.